It was an old banger that started the whole sequence. It wasn't my old car, let me tell you that. It was an old heap that my mate had scraped up from somewhere and he'd put in some effort getting it to run, working on the cheap. Working on the cheap meant borrowing my skills as a mechanic to help him. I told him when I first saw the car that he was an idiot. I'm not sure what that makes me because I helped him anyway.
Came the day that we finally got it running. You'll note I say running, not roadworthy. Even so, my mate insisted that we take her out for a test drive. My only stipulation was that we had to drive very quietly out into the country. Once out in the bush we could try her on some of the old dirt roads.
She actually ran quite well, which I took as proof of my mechanical skills. The problem came when we hit this nice long stretch of track and my mate put his foot down. We must have been doing nearly fifty mph when the drive shaft broke.
Now you're barrelling down the road and your drive shaft breaks. If you're lucky there's a snap and you're just running in neutral, slowing down to a halt. If you're not lucky there's a snap, followed by a thump, and you're travelling along with the rear of the drive shaft dragging along the road and making the whole car a bastard to steer while everything grinds to a halt.
We were neither lucky nor unlucky. We were disastrously unlucky. There was the snap of the drive shaft breaking, followed by the thump as the front of the drive shaft hit the ground.
You ever see a pole-vaulter in action? They run, bang their pole into the ground, and their forward motion changes to upward motion. Same with us. We were making a nice speed, the front of the drive shaft hit the ground and dug in, and our forward motion became upward motion as the rear of the car tried to pole-vault.
Where the rear of the car goes, so does the front. Sometimes leading the way and sometimes trailing. When the rear of the car went upwards at fifty mph, so did the front, even if we were a bit behind. The whole car did this huge hop, crashing back down to the ground. We didn't even budge from that spot. All our momentum had gone into that upward lunge and that speed was lost when gravity took over.
We were, slightly shaken, I suppose is one way to put it. Not an experience that I want to go through again. (I would have loved to have seen it from the outside, camera in hand. What a shot that would have been.) We scrambled out of that old banger and just stood looking at it.
It was plain that the poor old bomb wasn't going anywhere under its own steam. Ever. If it had been a horse we'd have shot it. If I'd had a gun, I'd probably have shot my idiot mate. Instead we shrugged, turned and started walking down that dusty road, heading for a proper road and a chance of a lift.
(The remains were my mate's responsibility. I'm quite sure he would make arrangements to shift the hulk. He'd already started by removing the number plates and taking them with us when we left. The rest he'd collect when convenient.)
When we reached the main road we split up. His place was to the north and mine to the south. We could both have hitched to Mike's place, but then he'd have had to run me home. It seemed to me that it would be faster for me to just simply head in my own direction and probably easier to get a lift, too. People who'd stop for a single hitch-hiker might balk at picking up a couple.
I was only on the road for about five minutes when a bus pulled up and offered me a lift. It wasn't a regular bus, but a private charter. It had this banner on the side proclaiming them to be some town's branch of the CWA. That's the Country Women's Association. Seeing the banner I recalled that the CWA were having this big do in the showgrounds just outside of my town.
I hopped on the bus and took a seat. There were about a dozen women on board plus the driver, also a woman. The women ranged from one nice little brunette of about twenty to a hatchet-faced old woman in her fifties. The little brunette was quite delicious. Old hatchet-face looked as though she'd scare off the Wicked Witch of the West.
Old hatchet-face promptly proved that appearances were deceiving.
I'm slightly over six foot tall and big boned. I also have some quite solid beef hanging from my big bones, amply backed up by some muscle. Heaving car and truck engines around can pretty quickly build you up, even with all the mechanical aids available.
"Geez, you're a fine big lad," said old hatchet-face. "I'm Paula. Who are you and what do you do?"
"I'm Ron," I said, "and I'm a mechanic."
"Not a very good one if you're reduced to hitching a ride," Paula said.
I laughed and recounted the tale of our broken drive shaft. I have a way with word when I choose, and I had them amused at my little misadventure. Then Paula started up again.
"You're a fine big lad. Bit of beef on you. Wouldn't mind seeing more of you. What do you say girls? Want to see more of this fine young man?"
Naïve little me didn't twig to exactly what she meant. The other women all knew Paula, and they all knew just what she meant. There was a chorus of giggles and general agreement. I didn't notice a single dissenter, although the little brunette was blushing.
"Tell you what," Paula says, turning back to me. "We'll take up a little collection for you and you can show us that fine body of yours. What do you say?"
"What I say is that you've got to be fucking kidding me," is what I said.
Paula laughed, and she had quite a raucous laugh.
"A sense of humour, as well," she crowed. "I like this lad. No seriously lad, it'd be fun. We'll probably only collect fifty, but hey, fifty is fifty and you'd have a fine tale to tell your mates."
She turned and shouted to the bus driver.
"Hey, Gladys, pull over for a minute and get your arse back here."
All the women were looking at me, but they weren't really lecherous looks. It was more a case of good humour, enjoying a little bit of naughty fun.
"Oh, go on, son," said one woman. "What's it going to hurt?"
They were all starting to look expectant and I thought, "What the hell. Why not?"
"It wouldn't feel right, taking your money," I told Paula, "but what the hell. We'll consider it my bus fair."
I stood up and slowly stripped, putting on a bit of a show. Geez, it felt weird. The women clapped and cheered as each item came off, finishing up applauding when my shorts came down. Now I wasn't tumescent. Standing naked in front of a dozen women didn't really do that much for me. Paula seemed vaguely put out.
"I don't know," she complained. "You can't tell how big a man is when he's like that. How can we boast and exaggerate what we've seen unless he flexes his muscle. Cynthia, give the man a hand."
She gave me a hand all right. One of the women, she looked to be in her late twenties, giggled and took hold of my cock and squeezed it. A few strokes and it started growing rapidly. It's one thing to have a limp cock while a bunch of women are just looking at you. It's something else when they start patting you personally. Let's say that my appearance grew on them.
"Like I said," Paula announced. "A fine young man. I do believe that it's only fair that one of us do something about that swelling."
Fuck me, no. The thought of Paula making advances on me almost made my erection collapse. Almost. Cocks are selfish little things once they're erect. I found myself glancing over at the little brunette, who was blushing again, but looking.
Paula spotted where I was looking and laughed. (Still a very raucous sound.)
